What about interactive Tactical Combat ?

[markmarques]

As someone stated before the inclusion of the option ( focus on option) of interacting in combat would mean a greater micromanagement burden.
What I meant would be the possibility to interact a bi more in tactical combat.
As an example (someone pointed that out sometihng similar) I had a spell caster that "incidentaly" destroyed everybody around him due to the nature of it own spell.
The ability to choose when to activate that spell would change completly the outcome of the combat.

The single ability for commander+squad to decide when to "attack|move| stay| spell" during turns would make a more deep commitment to the tactical decisions.
Of course a timeout would be needed.

For MP games the interaction during combat would not be needed.

Someone stated before the idea of a pre-combat set of orders (scripting) in order to achieve the ability to control the tactical combat...
If that is a way to achieve some control over tactical so be it...

Of course something like that would change the game mecanics a lot...
But for better I suppose.

Regarding the simulator issue I would agree that using a tool like that would ruin the "magic" deep of this game...

[tombom]

Also a lot of results involve random numbers which would be different.

[Gandalf Parker]

Graeme Dice said:

There is no possible way that a battle simulator could be construed as a bad thing unless you don't want the players of the game to have accurate information on the capabilities of various units. Accurate information is not a bad thing in a strategy game, no matter how much the anti-powergamer crowd wants it to be. Accurate information is the only thing that makes a strategy game worth playing, as without it your decisions are not meaningful and might as well be randomly assigned.

Exactly. That IS what I think. Dont forget that I play it solo and I love randoms. So as far as Im concerned less strategy in facvor of more randoms is not a threat. But as far as MP gaming, Ive seen games destroyed where every little thing could be so completely tested that a slight benefit amounted to defining the ultimate absolute winning strategy. There was no more reason to buy it, play it, discuss it. Or it turned into a continual give and take between player-testers and developers that it also wasnt worth really playing the game. As far as Im concerned that would suck and it would be stupid to give that ability to the players. Yes, keep them in the dark and make them PLAY the game to find their strategys.

Oops. Sorry for that. What I meant to say was in MY opinion there are some factors which might make.. nahh screw that. You wont play diplomat so why should I.

No, you did not post a link to a battle simulator. You posted a link to a map that can be used with some difficulty to create potential battles directly in the dominions game. It's nothing like a properly featured simulator that could be used to run the few thousand test casts that are needed to properly balance the gold costs on the vast number of overcosted units in Dominions.

Such a flat factual statement? Maybe you meant to say that in your opinion that was..
Scratch that also

No, I posted a link to a Battle Simulator. It works. It works better than Johans as far as Im concerned. You might like something fancier like some other games have but I see little benefit in having the devs work on one. Especially since the link I gave allows for well over 90% of whatever tests anyone wants to do and what little is left over Id doubt would show up in any other simulator.

[Graeme Dice]

Gandalf Parker said:
Exactly. That IS what I think. Dont forget that I play it solo and I love randoms. So as far as Im concerned less strategy in facvor of more randoms is not a threat.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing a game to win. If playing to win means that people use "unthematic" or "cheesy" tactics, then the problem is that the thematic and "non-cheesy" strategic elements aren't powerful enough. I also don't know why you feel that your games against the unintelligent AI would be threatened by the availability of a powerful learning tool to multiplayer players.

But as far as MP gaming, Ive seen games destroyed where every little thing could be so completely tested that a slight benefit amounted to defining the ultimate absolute winning strategy. There was no more reason to buy it, play it, discuss it. Or it turned into a continual give and take between player-testers and developers that it also wasnt worth really playing the game. As far as Im concerned that would suck and it would be stupid to give that ability to the players.

I'm glad that you feel that chess is a worthless strategy game thanks to its complete lack of randomness.

Personally, I'd also like to see some concrete examples of games that you think were ruined by such balancing.

Or it turned into a continual give and take between player-testers and developers that it also wasnt worth really playing the game. As far as Im concerned that would suck and it would be stupid to give that ability to the players.

It's _stupid_ to let players make meaningful decisions in a strategy game? If we follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion, it's clear that we must remove all decisions from the game. Everything shoud simply be a collection of random statistics where it's impossible to figure out any relationship between them. After all, it's stupid to let the players figure things out in the game.

Yes, keep them in the dark and make them PLAY the game to find their strategys.

I don't know why you feel that it's necessary to insult every player that wants more strategic decisions in their strategy game. I'd like to learn by playing the game. I'd even more like for new players to be able to learn by playing the game. Simulating battles is part of playing the game. It's merely one way of taking one of the most important parts of the game and working on learning that part without the distractions from the other parts of the game. Would you tell somebody who repeatedly practices a single measure of a difficult song to perfect it that they aren't playing properly? I'd hope not, because they are doing exactly what is needed to learn as effectively as possible.

Such a flat factual statement? Maybe you meant to say that in your opinion that was..

Some statements are simply correct or incorrect. There is no question of opinion when somebody makes a statement of fact.

No, I posted a link to a Battle Simulator.

I don't see any program that you posted, and I'm not sure why you want to argue the semantics of what the term "battle simulator" means. You provided a link to a map file that can only be used to get an extremely rough approximation of the capabilities of a true simulator. There are dozens of critical variables that can't be controlled on that map that effect battles. You can't control who has dominion in the province, whether there's a magic or drain scale, the heat scale, what spells are available to the nations, what globals are in effect and how strong they are in the particular province, what afflictions the units have, etc.

You might like something fancier like some other games have but I see little benefit in having the devs work on one. Especially since the link I gave allows for well over 90% of whatever tests anyone wants to do and what little is left over Id doubt would show up in any other simulator.

I want to test 1000 (or 2000, or 100,000) gold worth of every national infantry unit against every other national infantry unit in enough battles to produce statistically significant results. Such results would be extremely useful in providing players with concrete information about the actual capabilities of the units that they have available to them.

Now, I'm not sure why you think that your opinion of what the devs work on should rule the day, while those people who disagree with you have opinions don't matter. After all, you're the one who constantly tells us all that every opinion is equally valid.

[Maltrease]

I don't think there can be much reconciliation between the type of gamers that want

Every mechanic explicitly stated and equation defined. Maps out income over time in a spreadsheet to see effects of growth or death. Etc..

vs

Keep everything a mystery and just let me get a "feel" for the game after playing it several times. Eventually I will learn what works through enough trial, error and exploration.


I fall into the first school and it is completely infeasible to me why someone would desire the second (but of course many people do). I imagine those the second school can’t imagine why someone would want to “waste” all of their time calculating out all the details. I doubt there is any reason to debate it as you are not going to change anyone’s mind about it.

The simple fact is that the first school of thought will absolutely win more games and be more competitive then the second group.

I'll admit that I have killed many "shallow" games by going to GAMEFAQs and reading every rule, spell and mechanic then deciding that "I know everything about the game now... no reason to play it.". There are a lot of games that hide "boring, obscure or easily abuse-able" mechanics behind this "mystery".

Dominions has enough depth and already is EXTREMELY transparent in how the mechanics work that I have little worry there will every be a master document that would make be bored with the game after I read it. You may end up with something like the chess books have where you have some optimum openings and counters to them… but once you get a few turns in (or through in a few more variables) all bets are off.

So does an easy to use battle simulator help the 1st school or the 2nd school more? I don't know?

If there was an easy way to test how well 100 netted Merman (how do nets affect glamour) vs. 20 Helheim PD would the "mystery" player want to find out before they committed the action in their MULTIPLAYER game… that they have already spent countless hours on over weeks or months?

For me (if it was a critical component of my strategy)... falling into the first camp I would setup a 2 player game, build up the armies and test it manually. So maybe this takes me 10 minutes... way to much time for the player from the second school.

BUT... if running that test only took 2 minute due to a semi-automated way to build the map files and start with all the needed troops would that be easy enough for the "mystery" player to play out the situation.

BTW, I ran this test a few days ago and the merman netters didn't have the slightest chance of victory. (due to javelins and no protection)

To me the challenge and FUN is finding the solution to the problem. What can Oceania do vs. Helheim that is effective? (nothing I’ve found yet) So if someone comes at me with a specific army that is destroying me… I want to find the counter to it. And I don’t want to lose the game trying to find that counter… or lose the game without finding the counter.

Tools to help me with this research are greatly desired. The great thing about Dominions is there is so much variety that their will never be “Turn 1 to 40, Complete path to Victory” document. Even if you wrote 200 articles (one for each nation vs. another) it still isn’t going to be comprehensive as you don’t know what independent troops, lucky magic sites, pretender designs, scales, actually recruited troops are… they are just guides.

Is Chess boring because of the 100’s of strategy guides and books made for it? Its fun because all the rules are transparent and how you apply them determines your victory or success.

And you are never going to have a simulator that makes things like the effectiveness of raiding with stealth troops broken down into spreadsheet format.

Gah… guess I didn’t listen to my “no point to debate it” comment at the beginning. Nor have I spent the last hour on WORK that I need to do.

Anyways… my chapter is complete.

[Taqwus]

It's also true that there are behaviors that would be known to an actual commander, but are nowhere documented and thus can only be found by experimentation.

Behaviors such as a half-dozen mage-priests ALL completely neglecting to cast Bless when there are a few dozen sacred units in range, for instance, in favor of skellispamming; archers firing into a melee; troops cheerfully running through the left-behind cold/poison auras of their fellow monsters and dying because of it; mages casting Touch of Madness on their own side's archers and mages, thus stupidly ruining an otherwise perfectly valid deployment... and since the AI is perfectly incapable of avoiding much of what can go wrong, the only way to deal with this is to be aware of all this nonsense beforehand. That's the "unfair advantage" waiting to be discovered. Knowing one's own army is required for any commander.

ALL of that should, in fact, would be perfectly reasonable to know before battle. A simulator would NOT grant any additional information in pinpointing an opponent's disposition, tactics or use of resources. It WOULD grant information about what behavior they might have so people don't have to GUESS about such things as, say, "what happens if I mix units with different speeds in a squad with attack orders" or so forth.

[curtadams]

A big advantage of a simulator is that it would improve our ability to balance the units, nations, and PD. I'm playing Pythium MA solo right now and I'm pretty shocked how strong its PD is compared to other nations I've played. The AI is clearly underestimating it. Is the Pythium PD too strong for the cost? It's hard to say without a more rigorous test and that's not too practical at present.

[Endoperez]

curtadams said:
A big advantage of a simulator is that it would improve our ability to balance the units, nations, and PD. I'm playing Pythium MA solo right now and I'm pretty shocked how strong its PD is compared to other nations I've played. The AI is clearly underestimating it. Is the Pythium PD too strong for the cost? It's hard to say without a more rigorous test and that's not too practical at present.

The manual lists it as Velites, 2xAlae Legionnaires, and Hastati after PD 20+. Do they have something else in addition? Slingers?

I think any third types of units received in PD under 20 aren't included.

It doesn't sound that powerful, though. Lots of chaff, albeit with a slightly better morale than is usual, and some good infantry as well. Tien Chi gets 3 Footmen and 1 Imperial Footman after 20+, but that isn't good either. Marignon gets Pikeneers and Crossbowmans, and Halberdiers after PD 20+; that's much better IMO. They get ranged units AND infantry. Then there's Mictlan, which gets Jaguar Warriors!

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm PD could be tested on the Mini map also. I can set the nation that owns a province, and the PD of it. Then I can attack it to see what I come up against. Attacking it with the same army each time would be an interesting benchmark. That would probably be worth doing.

[curtadams]

Endoperez said:
The manual lists it as Velites, 2xAlae Legionnaires, and Hastati after PD 20+. Do they have something else in addition? Slingers?

I think any third types of units received in PD under 20 aren't included.

It doesn't sound that powerful, though. Lots of chaff, albeit with a slightly better morale than is usual, and some good infantry as well. Tien Chi gets 3 Footmen and 1 Imperial Footman after 20+, but that isn't good either. Marignon gets Pikeneers and Crossbowmans, and Halberdiers after PD 20+; that's much better IMO. They get ranged units AND infantry. Then there's Mictlan, which gets Jaguar Warriors!

No, the Pythium PD doesn't sound strong at all. That's part of why I was puzzled at the result. Some slingers do show up so they are part of it. Mostly it's just that the defense is mostly shielded medium infantry, which is hard to kill, and they're not breaking. It could be that my opponents (Caelum, Mictlan, and Ermor) have fairly light units (Ermor already has lots of undead).

With AI positioning, an almost-all-ground force might be an advantage. The armies will normally meet in the middle and most archers have pretty mediocre aim at that distance. The Caelum archers are probably hurting their own force almost as much as mine, and I have a lot more infantry.

Incidentally, it's not that the forces are totally unbeatable by what the computer has. It's more that the computer now tries to send the minimum force to do the job and it's not sending enough. On more than one occaision the computer has split its force and what could easily have taken one province has gotten beaten attacking two. Even so, though, several times I'd given up a province for lost and then the computer failed even with a respectable force. Maybe I just got lucky on the morale checks. It would be nice to be able to test it.